Author's Note

I'm giving up on the proofreader group. Almost five months of trying, seven different proofreaders contacted, including the "big boss" of the group, and still nothing. I'm sorry if spelling or grammar is sub-par from now on, but I'm not going to keep hitting my head against the wall, and the readers waited for the updates long enough. If someone is willing to pick up proofreading or just point out errors in what I'm posting, you're more than welcome to do so, but I'm officially giving up proactive search for proofreaders.

Biometallurgy

First things first, apply baton to remote control module. Three hits, some sparks, and the hoverbike was off the leash. Next, the little-known backdoor into the city vehicle database, a quick scan, delete. The record of my hoverbike just vanished from the list. Sure, they can recover it from backups, but it takes time. For now the vehicle became much harder to track.

Next, I found the socket behind my dimwit love's ear. I extended the cord from my fetlock and plugged it in. Some quick deleting, disabling, reconfiguring, and his own remote comms went offline, becoming invisible to the system. Using the wire to overcome the roar of the engine I fed my voice directly to his ears.

"Listen now well. Since I helped you escape I will be charged with aiding a wanted criminal. Shortly: I went rogue. You know what happens to replicants who go rogue. No lawsuit, no questions, no reflash, just the incinerator. So, if you want me alive, then we're getting out of this together. No dumping me and turning yourself in to the authorities. Understood?"

"Yes!" he replied. I heard unbridled joy over the revelation that I loved him, in total disregard of our current situation. I knocked his head hard with my hoof. "Idiot," I muttered.

"Sorry!"

"Then move. I'm getting to the front." I unplugged myself from his skull, drawing the cord in.

They taught us that at the academy... oh well, actually they loaded our brains with that skill at the Deckard replicant factory. Legs to the side, firm grip, I pushed myself by the side of the stallion to the front. Except back then that wasn't the stallion you'd be in love with. I felt pleasurable tingling from rubbing against his side and I hated myself for it. Focus, Baton, if we're to survive this!

Finally, I was seated in front of him, his body leaning over my back. I extended my hoof with the cable to him and he plugged it in.

"Now if we're to remain hard to find, I must become invisible to all communication devices, and I have quite a few more in me than you. Find a megafreighter and land between the containers. Drop the hoverbike over board and hide me deep in the bilge, far below water level, where the radios wouldn't reach. Only then switch me on."

"What do you mean..."

I jerked the wire off the socket, lay flat on the hull of the hoverbike, then put my hoof to my head. I charged the taser. All systems on stand-by, entering low-power mode, redundant systems switched off, deep sleep. Last preprogrammed action, as my awareness faded, was triggering the taser. It knocked all the remaining systems out, and there was not even the bootstrap process left to reactivate me. I'd remain dead until somepony switches me back on again.

* * *

Baton put her hoof to her head and I heard a loud zap of electricity. The pulse stung my chest and made me numb for a moment.

For a second I felt terror that she did kill herself, but then I recalled: owners are not too fond of their property running away. Replicants can't switch their locators off normally. Even in full shutdown they broadcast their location. I felt my heart pound faster, fondly thinking of my smart love.

Then my mood sunk. Megafreighters are well protected against theft. A lot of cameras, automatic security systems, she was smart but she didn't know all about port security. We'd never hide in one of these. Not to mention signal amplifiers that allowed communication with the outside from the deepest corners of their cargo holds. So, switching her on, deep down there, was out of question.

I leaned into the unconscious body of my beloved, nuzzling her neck. With extreme discomfort I felt my groin resting against her exposed back. I felt cold sweat on my neck over what I'd done to her. Would she ever forgive me?

Not now. There won't be any forgiving if we're dead. I banked gently, turning by roughly thirty degrees from original direction, to lose pursuit in case we were followed in a straight line. Luckily police hoverbikes were ones of the fastest vehicles in Hayburg, and we were moving at top speed without break, so it was unlikely a chase would catch up for now. Of course soon they would move military vehicles, which could fly in circles around us. How soon? And if not the megafreighter, then what?

Let us hope my idea isn't too dumb... at least not as dumb as the previous ones.

I readjusted my route towards the orbital barge drop zone. Five minutes later I passed a tell-tale tidal wave rolling away from where a barge impacted the ocean minutes before.

And there was the shining oblong sphere floating on the turbulent surface, a deck with a short, squat superstructure, a hard light dome covering the deck, bulky hull appearing from time to time as it rolled over the waves. Sometimes the barges were off by a few hundred meters. The tugboat would pull them along the bottom to the electromagnetic rails. Crew of four, and totally out of reach when submerged to the sea bottom.

Let us hope I can overpower four ponies alone.

Wobbling over the waves and dodging them, I approached the vessel. Oh, yeah, I forgot: They need to withdraw the dome. And I need to land there. Normally, autopilot does that easily but my brilliant marefriend smashed ours to smithereens.

The shield flickered and vanished. There, part one solved itself. Now to land...

I wobbled over the landing deck, as it slid from below me left or right every moment. Damn, I was sure Baton would have done it in one smooth move. And there I was, flying a hoverbike for the first time since high school, trying to make a landing on a ship in bad waves.

I pushed up from a wave that threatened to slam the ship into me and swallow me, and made another approach. Oh shit! Baton began slipping off the seat! I let go of the handles and put all my strength in pulling her back in position. And then I saw us heading right into the superstructure, about to crash.

Then suddenly the motors screamed as stabilizers failed to prevent the rapid descent, and we skidded over the landing pad, hard, the support wheels of the hoverbike snapping to the side. My head was pushed into Baton's back, invisible force pulling on me hard. I saw how she lay flat on the hoverbike, dragged down.

I switched the engine off and tried to reach for Baton's gun using the virtual horn magic, but I couldn't lift it.

The shield flickered over us, and a siren sounded. Seconds later I felt us moving downwards and a layer of water covered us. Spotlights on the superstructure came to life, flooding the deck with harsh light.

The weight suddenly let go. I sat up and stared at three ponies approaching me from the door in the superstructure. I made a grab for the gun and pointed it at them.

"Portmaster, put that down," said the one on the front. "That's a police gun. Owner-locked, you can't shoot it."

For a test I aimed it at the dome and pulled the trigger. And sure enough, there was just a quiet double beep.

"And besides," the next one said, "you really don't need it. Do you want to make more enemies than you have already?"

"uh..." I rubbed my head, returning the gun to Baton's holster and thinking of my options. "Parlay?"

"What happened to her?" the third one pointed to Baton.

"She switched herself off," I answered. "I believe we avoided detection up to this point."

"Good," the leader said. "I'd hate trying to lose military submarines. Get inside. We have another splashdown in three minutes. It will get shaky."

I got off the hoverbike, my injured limbs protesting in pain. I tried to pull Baton onto my back, but one of the crewponies got her before me, and I just followed them inside the superstructure.

* * *

The cold boot-up procedure passed through all tests. Some small damages were repaired, one less important circuit too damaged for repair was deferred to backups, and finally visuals came on line.

In panic I looked around the small mess hall, four strange ponies sitting around the table, Portmaster sitting across from me.

I sent him a glare.

"Welcome back among the living," I heard.

"Where am I?" I asked, looking around, panicked a little by the fact my comms failed to reach anything but systems of my immediate surroundings, and only reminding myself it's good that they did.

"With friends," one bulky green pony in a black wool hat and with a short, wide beard said.

"Who are you?"

"Sharky." The bearded one nodded to me.

"Piston," said a slim one, with his coat so stained with grease the yellow fur barely stuck out.

"Squall," a cyan mare in a storm anorak spoke.

"Herring," a short, young gray pony answered.

"Welcome on board of Yellow Squid," Sharky said, when others finished their introduction. "We're currently six hundred meters under the surface, sitting on the sea bottom in the orbital barge drop zone. Also, you have ten million bits bounty on your heads, each, and while we're not greedy for money and respect our Portmaster here deeply, we're not too fond of getting reflashed for aiding fugitives, so if you could come up with some sensible plan of getting out of here, we'd be extremely grateful."

"Portmaster, we were supposed to be on a megafreighter." I glared at my stallion. "We'd find a container bound for some colonies and escape as stowaway. That was my plan."

"Other that the space freight cargo bays don't have life support, that the containers are weight-matched against manifest to a gram when transferred between vessels, that megafreighters have superior monitoring and fearsome automatic defenses, and that their internal signal amplifiers would make us as visible as if we sat in the middle of Hayburg market square, your plan was pretty neat," he answered. "But we need to think of a new one, and this boat here is the one vessel the port was unable to communicate with for hours at a time. It's not a way out but it gives us some time to plan."

"The only one?" I scowled.

"There were two, but the other one was in the port during the impact."

"That means this one will be the first on the list of places to check as soon as the orbital scan finds no trace of us over the sea within the hoverbike range."

He cursed under his breath. The crewponies looked at each other uncomfortably.

"I think I have an idea," the young gray pony spoke.

"Spit it out, kid," Squall said.

"There's that copper barge that went a little off-course, lost one of iron skids on impact, caught on something on the bottom. We were supposed to move it later today. There's the maintenance bay in it. We'll drop them off inside, dump the hoverbike at impact point of the iridium dump that's due in fifty minutes, surface, turn up clean for the control, then pick them back up from the barge when we're clean."

"Sounds like a plan, and even subs looking for them won't detect them through two meters of solid copper." Sharky nodded.

"Incoming in ten, brace yourself," Squall interrupted. The crewponies sat tight in their chairs. I grabbed mine, Portmaster held his. The ship shook violently.

"Zinc, on the spot," Squall said. "The rails picked it up already. So, we dump you on the copper barge, with some supplies to last you a couple hours, and we're back for you after the control and then we think of some way to ferry you away. There's an abandoned undersea research base some two hundred kilometers away, we could drop you off there until things die down a little, after search crews confirm the base empty. Then we'll work from there. A bathyscaphe to get you to dragon lands or something like that."

"Thanks," I smiled.

"Well, thank you," Sharky spoke. "Thank you, Portmaster, for all you did for us so far, and thank you, Baton, for saving his ass."

I groaned. "Don't thank me for my stupidity, please."

The seapony chuckled, then invited us to the bridge, to watch our approach to the inert barge.

* * *

What are two ponies in love supposed to do when locked together in a dark, three cubic meters big box, with no comforts, no way out, nothing to do for a couple hours, and nothing but a few cans of food, a pair of batteries, an air recycler, and each other for entertainment?

If you said 'make love', fuck you.

If you said 'argue', have a cookie.

My throat was getting sore from yelling at that dimwit.

"Terrorist action ALWAYS, ALWAYS incites adverse reaction! No matter how much you achieved short-term, long term consequences will make it worse than it was in the first place!"

"Worse than turning whole police force into a free of charge sex slave brothel? Worse than city incinerators getting clogged up on mares dying to 'entertainment' of the Red District? Worse than the spring Fox Hunt, with replicants as prey? Worse than the city cleaners introducing a special tariff for replicant disposal, as a service? Baton, my job was logistics. I was ordering replicants in bulk to replace the ones murdered by this sick city. Below a thousand a month was a good month. Can you imagine, can you suggest how the long-term results can be worse than that?"

"We still have a choice. We still can try to run. We can still think about rebelling. We have hope. We can have our little private secret lives. Does the name 'dissent suppressor' mean anything to you? Do you know what it does?"

"The Deckard Corporation said they will not implement it, period."

"And that's why Flancesco Ltd. plans to pick up the slack. They have a working prototype. I saw the promo video. A replicant was loaded with a dream, one of my personal favorites. I saw the microcharge going off in his head mid-way through his dream. Dissent thoughts detector wired to an explosive charge. Just a sudden spray of blood out of his nostrils and ears, the end. That's the future you're buying us!"

"That's why it had to be me! That's why they need to realize that no amount of mechanisms built into replicants are going to stop us, fleshies, from fighting for the fourth breed!"

"First, that will only speed up the suppressors, to make your fight pointless. If every replicant in the port had it installed, there would be one big 'poof' to accompany the impact of the barge. You'd know how many replicants you'd kill, as effect you'd never enact your plan. And besides, if I heard any replicant say 'fleshie' I'd fucking break their legs. That's not how we speak of you ponies."

"These suppressors are bullshit. Do you think any brothel would afford another mare every time a customer gets rough? How many of you policeponies would survive past the first servicing of some tourist? The idea is so retarded it would die within a month of reaching the market!"

"You still don't realize it, you fucking moron! We. Are. Not. Ponies. We don't think like ponies. We can suppress thoughts and ideas, desires and fears, do with our minds things you can't even imagine. It would take a simple hotfix upgrade to make us capable of trivially suppressing dissent. The suppressors would..."

I didn't finish. A sudden shock threw us across the narrow space, rolling us over. Then I felt the barge moving, turning under our hooves, the small room flipping over, turning, shifting, sending us tumbling into each other. I heard crunching of rocks of the ocean floor under us. Then I felt magnetic pull towards a wall.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" Portmaster held to a clamp on the far wall, trying to recover balance in the moving interior. "A barge hit somewhere close. We're being pulled in."

"What?!"

"The rails grabbed the remaining skid and are pulling us in."

The barge floated for a while, then shook violently, as a metallic clang sounded. Then it sped up smoothly forward. Constant push of acceleration gradually leveled out, only weak shaking and throb of magnetic field reminding us we were moving rapidly along the magnetic rails.

"Shit." Portmaster sat down, and shook his head. "Let's not argue in our last twelve minutes."

"The furnace?"

"Yes." He nodded sadly. "Baton... I never said it... I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did to you. I put you through so much shit. And now..."

"Fucking dumbass," I muttered. "It will be a welcome relief. Stomper, I'm a replicant, a creature of logic. I fucking hate you, you asshole, and I fucking love you more than the entire world. Do you even begin to realize how much you fucked me up?"

"I thought love and hate are mutually exclusive. That once you hate me you can't love me."

"To your credit, I thought so too, before I learned otherwise."

"You won't forgive me?"

"Not within next twelve minutes, no. Maybe if we had more time..."

"Do you believe us together could have been a thing?"

"If we ever got out of this hell of a city... without ten million bits of bounty on our heads... Of course we'd be a very miserable couple, you always stirring shit up with your crusade and me pissed at you, but yes, it could have worked like that."

He sat there, watching me with his one good half-closed eye silently.

"And no, Stomper, I don't feel like having good-bye sex with you."

He just nodded.

"But if you want a good-bye kiss... Just don't imagine I forgave you."

* * *

Suddenly, we were jerked out of our kiss. Our copper coffin stopped rapidly, sending us crashing into the front wall.

I heard muffled curses. I recognized a voice. "It's the copper! Get the crane here! We must get it off the track or the furnace will overflow!"

I rushed at the hatch and pounded on it with my hooves. It could only be opened if powered up, and the barge was entirely unpowered.

"Anypony in there?" sounded from outside.

"Let us out!"

Loud steps.

"Hook, hurry up! There are ponies in there!"

Some shifting, the barge rolled again, some shaking, then the floor leveled out.

Some more noises. Portmaster put his hoof on my shoulder. I shook it off.

Some three minutes later I heard knocking on the outside, something clamped to the barge, then a hiss of pressurized air. Bolts of the hatch disengaged and it swung out. There were two ponies at the end of the short corridor leading outside.

I walked out, tentatively. Portmaster followed me.

We were in the underground switching station of the magnetic rail, redirecting barges of various metals to different furnaces. Our barge lay on the floor near a crossing, where it was deposited next to several others, apparently awaiting repair of the pipelines destroyed by the impact.

We looked at the two ponies. One of them, black, one eye missing and some electronics showing through the eye socket, held an industrial microwave welder in his mouth, which he probably used to attach power to the barge. He didn't point it exactly at us, but he did hold it pointed in our general direction... and I knew it could boil all my blood in half a second. We did have a murder case involving one of these. The coroner still hates talking about it.

The other pony, young, purple, green mane in a spiky mohawk, was unarmed.

The two looked at us uncertainly, as if we were murderously dangerous criminals.

"Fuck it, Hook," the one without the welder said, "do we have a choice?"

"Shit." The other one spat through the corner of his mouth. "Sorry, Portmaster, but it's not even erasure for me. Been in some trouble, straight to incinerator without even courtesy of switching me off. I'm sorry as fuck, but please, don't make it any harder." He waved the welder towards an exit.

The moment he had the welder off us I drew my gun and pointed at him. "Drop it," I said.

The heavy device clanged on the floor, and to my great surprise the two gasped with relief, relaxing visibly. "Thanks Celestia," the one called Hook said, wiping sweat off his eyebrow.

I cursed under my breath. That's not how ponies are supposed to behave when one points a gun at them!

"You have us at gunpoint, we have no choice but to comply," the other said, grinning to me.

"How soon will the cops get here?"

"If we don't open the blast door up there, it may take them some fifteen minutes through alternate routes, or to get the blast door open."

"Blast door?" I frowned.

"You see, sometimes there are faults in the barges. Big vacuum bubbles. Sometimes they open up on impact into sea and suck up several tons of seawater. Do you know what happens if you dump several tons of sea water enclosed in a block of solid tungsten into furnace of superheated liquid tungsten?" the purple one explained.

"Two next replicants of dubious past take our places, that's what happens," Hook muttered. "And the blast door protects the port from the explosion. At least Portmaster got a switch installed, to stop the rail if we see a barge is leaking water, so that we can empty it before it's dumped into the furnace. Saved my life twice already. Let's move."

Just another Hayburg story. I cursed under my breath and followed them to the exit from the switching hall.

"So, now that we're forced to cooperate under threat of the gun..." The pony with green spiky mohawk winked. "how may we help you?"

"Where can we get from here without getting caught?"

"There are service rails along the pipelines, all over Equestria," Hook said. "Not getting caught may be a bit of a problem though. It's not like you can make sudden turns in there to lose the chase. It could get you out of the city, to the nearest pumping stations, but other than that..." he was interrupted by the other one's hoof on his shoulder. "What?"

"Module return rail."

"This will land them in the very hub, how the fuck are they supposed not to get caught?"

"What other options do we have? Load them on a barge and reverse the rails? We could just lead them to the cops, for all good it would have done. At least the hub is a maze where they stand a chance."

"You mean the transport hub under the spaceport?" Portmaster spoke.

"Yes," Hook explained. "Back when the railguns had worse accuracy and the barges had guidance systems to get them into capture zone on atmospheric descent, our predecessors would detach the guidance modules from the barges and return them through a dedicated rail to the spaceport, for reuse. Nowadays the rail is mostly unused except when Spike here goes to buy some smokes."

"Spike? As in that little dragon?" I asked, surprised.

"Little?" Spike laughed. "My namesake is currently a monster the size of a megafreighter, and lives somewhere in Epsilon Eridani, helping Princess Twilight build a colony. But yeah, he was my favorite when I was a foal... or..." he saddened, "at least that's what my memories say."

"Well, I love the dreams with the little tyke," I said.

"Have you seen the remake of 'The Dog and Pony Show'? The vintage is excellent, but they made the remake even better. Not like all the other remakes."

"I'll grab it off the machine when I find one then."

"Oh come on, you're wanted for aiding a wanted terrorist escape and you're squeamish about illegal downloads? I've got an unprotected copy." He stopped and exposed his neck socket to me.

"Just don't infect me with something." I extended the wire from my fetlock.

"Like cooties?" He laughed and plugged me in. I still had the gun almost to his head.

Portmaster and Hook exchanged one-eyed glances.

"Is that how the Stockolt syndrome looks like?" Portmaster asked.

"It's supposed to take at least a few hours," Hook replied.

And then, besides the illicit dream, I got a few other files. A detailed map of the hub, including passages not present on official maps. Codes to various service doors, including two amplifiers. If I manage to take both out, I'd be invisible. Turret coverage areas, avoid. Valve codes for the liquid metal pipelines, just in case I wanted to flood some city or village with liquid metal. Spaceship schedules, including loading schedules and cargo manifests. Control keys for municipal transport trucks. Sewer network map.

I made a mental note: if I ever get out of this safely, I've got to message Hollow Point to hire that kid. Skilled hackers were always in demand in the forces.

We stopped at the station of the technical rail. A single open cart with barely some pipe rail-guards to protect the cargo from falling out sat at the entrance of the low tunnel. Old, noisy hover pads buzzed angrily under combined weight of Portmaster and me as we boarded it.

"Thanks for your help," I grinned, waving my gun at the two.

Hook mock-glared at me. "We've only done what you forced us to!"

The engine of the cart spun up, and we had to duck before the cart entered the low tunnel.